Halo and CoD are fun

[gigastar]

First Halo game i played was ODST. Spent a good couple of hours trying to find where the fun was. I eventually gave up about when it put me in some slow-ass tank with a fixed camera angle so i couldnt look up.

CoD, played BlOps and it crashed during the first mission.
Reloaded and it crashed after the end of the first mission.
Reloaded again and this time it crashed out of the nearest window.
Really my hatred for the series is more directed at Activison than at CoD itself. One game a year is an excellent way to stagnate innovation and new ideas. EA learned that the hard way, as soon as Activision does the same, i might like CoD.

 

[Neverhoodian]

The Halo series is awesome. Between the games and novels, it has a deep and intricate backstory. I'm a fan of its distinctive art style as well. It's also one of the few FPS games out there where regenerating health (shields in this case) actually makes sense. I must admit though that the multiplayer community is, to borrow a phrase from Yahtzee, a bunch of "hooting dickholes."

Though I've stopped buying Call of Duty games (because I don't like Kotick), I still play them from time to time when friends bring them over. They're fun in short bursts, but I tend to get burned out if I play them over an hour. I stick to single player and co-op.

I don't have a problem if people don't like these series if they gave them a chance and tried playing them. It's people that attack games that they've obviously never played that I have no patience for.

 

[Owyn_Merrilin]

It's not that either series is out and out bad, it's that there were much better options out at the time of peak popularity for each series, and the gamers who had been around longer and played the better games were miffed that something so mediocre by comparison was constantly getting called the best game ever by people who had played little aside from that game. When the original Halo came out, for example, I found it slow, plodding, and plagued with awkward jumping mechanics, because the other games at the time were mostly arena shooters, in the vein of Quake and Unreal. Now that almost every game on the market is in some way a descendant of Halo, it actually feels fast paced and high mobility by comparison, and I've grown to like the series.

CoD is an odd duck; it's a lot of fun for splitscreen, which is why I kind of enjoy it, but the mechanics of the current games in the series are so broken that it's hard to understand why CoD is the current king of the hill, and not, say, Battlefield, TF2, or even Halo. I enjoy it on the level that I would enjoy versus on an old Mortal Kombat game -- and anyone who spent time on those broken excuses for games in their youth knows what I'm talking about -- but I can understand why so many people are upset at its rampant popularity.

 

[Ugert]

I agree. They are fun. Not the best games I've ever played, but certainly great enough to thoroughly enjoy my time with them.

 

[Venereus]

Indeed they are fun. They're actually among the best of their genre, and it boggles the mind how many games fail at the simple task of being a FPS clone.

 

[SEPECAT]

See, I know Halo and CoD both have plenty of flaws and that just because I enjoyed something doesn't mean that someone else should. I just wanted a little corner where some people could drop off a memory of the games that they enjoyed. If you didn't like anything about them, that's fine, but is this really the place to express that? I know about the many many many threads out there on hating these games and they seem much better suited for points of view on why they sucked, especially because those are often debates between fans and haters.

I also know that having people rushing to defend Halo or CoD on a "Why do you hate Halo/CoD" thread makes as much sense as people rushing to attack these games on a "Why do you like Halo/CoD" thread. Still, this is really just for reminiscing about moments that made you happy. Could we leave the debates and dislikes for another thread and just let the people who would enjoy the content posted here enjoy it?

 

[viking97]

Never played CoD, but Halo has probably the best storyline I've seen in an FPS for a very long time, and I've played quite a few FPSs in my time. Yes, I'm going there. Fine, the story isn't massively great, especially compared to most non-FPS games, and is improved mainly through the books and graphic novels and anime. But nevertheless, it's pretty immersive, does a great job in the first few games of building a really interesting world and characters, and then expanding on that and including elements from the books in the later games, something that not a lot of games do nowadays. I enjoyed it greatly, and it has characters that you genuinely care about and want to know more of. As far as FPSs go, Halo is pretty damn awesome...

if you thought halo had a good story, i bet half life would blow your mind.

i really liked forge mode in halo 3 and reach, i never actual made any levels but it was fun to fuck around with a few buddies, basically greifing the hell out of each other.
i also really liked the enemy design, i remember when i first played halo three and killed a brute, and i ran up and just stared at all the detail in its corpse. awesome.
halo's ai kicked ass as well.

 

[Bobbity]

I'm not so sure about CoD; the multiplayer is challenging, but not very interesting relative to other games. Whereas Halo, on the other hand, is actually a lot of fun, with vehicles and a lot more variety.

Battlefield 3 will be far better than the both of them, though [small](hopefully)[/small]

 

[Snotnarok]

OP let me just ask you something, why do you care what other people think about a game you love? Why does their dislike of a game get in the way of you enjoying it? Fuck everyone else, like what you like.

The Escapist is filled with a lot of elitists who think a game is bad just because it's popular or it doesn't have a element they find key. And in their mind, their opinion is fact. There's a lot of games I like a lot that get bashed hard here too and I really could care less what they think considering they're playing off a mob mentality and probably haven't even played the game in the past 7 years (or at all) and are going off what they vaguely recall or just what they read on the net. Doesn't bother me at all, because it's not gonna stop me from enjoying a game I like, and the same should apply to you.

 

[Irridium]

Eh, people like what they like. I like CoD and Halo, some don't. Whatever.

But there is one thing Reach has done better than any game of this generation. And that is a bug-free release. The game has not had one patch since its release, and it doesn't need one. These days, thats one hell of an accomplishment. Which is actually pretty sad, in a way.

 

[beniki]

I only played the new brand of CoD once. It was okay as far as I could tell, but getting shot through walls and head shotted as soon as I spawned dampened my enthusiasm. Loved the hell out of the first few games though. That SAS bridge mission in the first one was one of the best levels I've played.

As for Halo, well, never got into it. But something I like: Red vs. Blue. I couldn't care less about the games, but I'm glad Bungie release a graphics update for that series every few years!

But to be honest, every multiplayer FPS after Battlefield has seemed a little dull to me, especially after 2142. Once you've parachuted out of your flaming hover ship after destroying gun turrets on a floating fortress, only to infiltrate said fortress and blow up the power core, well, a simple deathmatch just doesn't do it anymore.

 

[Xanadu84]

If a game is that popular, it is probably doing SOMETHING right. If it doesn't do it for you, fine, but to say they are bad by virtue of you not liking them is small minded, and can only hurt your ability to understand what goes into making an enjoyable video game. I don't like Halo, but I have to acknowledge that with so may fans, it must be doing something people enjoy. And I opened myself to learning what that is, and I understand games as a medium more because of it. Long and short of it is that if people have fun, the game succeeded. You can try to figure out why that is, or how it overcame the shortcomings you see, but you have to start with the understanding that it had a goal, and met that goal.

 

[Findlebob]

Played the early Halo's and all the Cod's ever. Generic first person shooter's with black ops been the final nail in the coffin. As for halo the only thing i thought was that it was a first person shooter...on another planet.

 

[Shycte]

I've always prefered Battlefield so be honest, but I can see the charm in CoD.

 

[alfawx]

I like handguns in COD and the Magnum in Halo, mostly because I think they look cool and people tend to rage if killed by them, especially since they kinda suck in Black Ops.

 

[TheRightToArmBears]

I never really got into Halo (that's more through thefact that I don't have an Xbox), but I've played some matches split-screen of Halo 3 and it was pretty fun.

However, I do really like CoD, especially playing WaW online. It gets everything just right, there's just enough customisation, but not so much that the players with the best perks and gear can instantly dick on everyone. The maps are great, and the tanks aren't to overpowered (and not to weak either), but they add a lot to some of the maps. None of the killstreaks are too awful either.

I do also love that on MW2 all the options for customisation avaliable online are also avaliable for split-screen mode. When you live in a house with three other gamers this really makes a lot of sense; there just aren't any other games where you can do that. I think MW2 did go a bit overboard with the customisation, but when you're in the same room with the people you're playing with it's very easy to reach agreements about which perk or killstreak is a dick move and shouldn't be used.

To be honest, some of the complaints aimed at CoD are ridiculous. For example, CoD does not try to be realistic. It tries to look realistic, which adds to the badass fantasy. If it tried to be realistic there wouldn't be a perk in MW2 that means you have no body temperature.

I wouldn't ever say that it's a perticularly deep or engaging experience but it's pretty much the purest, most mindless fun I can ever get out of gaming that's not Conker's Bad Fur Day.

 

[Trivun]

Never played CoD, but Halo has probably the best storyline I've seen in an FPS for a very long time, and I've played quite a few FPSs in my time. Yes, I'm going there. Fine, the story isn't massively great, especially compared to most non-FPS games, and is improved mainly through the books and graphic novels and anime. But nevertheless, it's pretty immersive, does a great job in the first few games of building a really interesting world and characters, and then expanding on that and including elements from the books in the later games, something that not a lot of games do nowadays. I enjoyed it greatly, and it has characters that you genuinely care about and want to know more of. As far as FPSs go, Halo is pretty damn awesome...

if you thought halo had a good story, i bet half life would blow your mind.

i really liked forge mode in halo 3 and reach, i never actual made any levels but it was fun to fuck around with a few buddies, basically greifing the hell out of each other.
i also really liked the enemy design, i remember when i first played halo three and killed a brute, and i ran up and just stared at all the detail in its corpse. awesome.
halo's ai kicked ass as well.

Yeah, I have Half Life, and HL2 and the episodes. Maybe I should clarify, I meant 'one of the best' rather than the exact best, though there are some moments where Halo manages to even out-trump Half Life for sheer awesome storytelling. For example, I cared much more about Sgt. Johnson, and what happens to him in Halo 3, than I did about Eli Vance, though both were great characters and it was sad to see what happened in both games. I guess it's all just subjective at the end of the day...

 

[ultratog1028]

It's totally subjective. Honestly they both have thier goods and bads. Doesn't mean you've got to hate someone for liking the one you don't like. What if that kind of mentality has applied in everyday life?

You would see people screaming at each other over if Vanilla or Chocolate Ice cream was better.

 

[Waaghpowa]

I for one loved the first Halo game, to me it was different at the time and I played it a lot. Halo 2 came along, dual weapons yeah! ended up being kinda "meh". Halo 3 was absolutely bloody terrible, too much emphasis on MP, not enough SP. It's been a while since I played it, so I can't remember the details as to why I hated 3.

Basically my problem with Halo is that it's shifted it's priorities from Single player to multi-player, not to say multiplayer isn't good, but why should I pay full price for the game if it's only half good?

Cod fails, for me at least, for similar reasons as Halo. Full price for half a game, that and some people are just waaaay too obsessed with it. Also the fact that CoD is turning into an EA sports franchise, releasing a new game every year with minor changes for full price. yeah, not for me.

 

[Varitel]

I've played all the original Halo trilogy. I enjoyed Halo 1 which had a very good story. I thought Halo 2 had a good story until the middle where it just got stupid, and I personally thought that Halo 3 was poorly designed and frustrating. None of them were "spectacular" as far as FPS's go, at least in terms of the single player (multiplayer was still fun as hell though). As for CoD, I thought CoD 4 was awesome. It was challenging, well designed, and well written.

You are correct though in saying that they were all fun (except for the end of Halo 3).